) was a prominent scientist of pure and applied mathematics. He is best known for his contribution to the Hungarian method. However, his research activity included much more than that and he obtained many important and genuine results in other areas of mathematics and its applications. He was also an outstanding teacher and a key person of Hungarian applied mathematics until 1958, when he committed suicide. This was the aftermath of the 1956 revolution of Hungary with a harsh oppression. Not long after Egerváry's death, his research department was dissolved and by the early seventies he and his results were rarely mentioned in mathematical circles apart from his relation to the Hungarian method. At the end of the eighties his linear algebra related research came into light due to its connection T. Csendes (B)